I'm new to burning dvds. I use DVD shrink, nero 6 ultra lite edition, Sony burner and tdk dvd+r disks. My burn speed is only 4x although it can handle 16x. The stand alone dvd player is a Panasonic, about 1 yr old or so. fairly new, good condition never had a problem with pixelization except for one original disk. The problem seems to be that just about every disk that i burn there is at least some pixelization on the playback. Any recommendations and suggestions are more than welcome! This problem is driving me nuts.
Any time you take data of a given size, and reduce it, you are going to lose quality. Even DVDShrink can only do so much. The best you can hope for, is to remove everything you don't need, and only shrink the main movie. The less you shrink, the better the quality. Deep analysis helps, but only so much.
Burning speed should not matter, providing you're using blanks that can be written to at the speed you're using. Although some would say, burn at half the rated speed of the disk to insure compatibility, I disagree. If the disk is rated at 8x, burn at 8x. If it fails, there is something else wrong. It's not the disk's fault, nor is it likely to be the burning software's fault. More likely, your system is attempting to do something else at the same time. Even if this is the case, if the whole of Windows is set up correctly, one should still be able to multitask durning burning. A computer is designed to be used, not for you to sit around waiting for one thing to finish before you start another. Your "pixelization" is more the result of the encoder. Even DVDShrink has to re-encode the whole thing, at a lower bitrate, in order to fit a whole DVD9 onto a DVD5 disk. If you're unhappy with the end result, I suggest you find other tools to do the job. There are a multitude of ways to get an mpeg from a DVD, and reauthor it to dvdr. Shrink just happens to be the least involved method. "One-click" type applications rarely deliver the best quality.
If your backing up DVD movies then Shrink will work just fine as long as all you back up is the Main Movie. Most movies fir onto one DVD 5 disk with little or no compression at all. You are probably backing up the whole DVD 9 disk, and no matter what proggy tou use this is going to degrade the outcome because it has to compress. It could also be your Media is of poor quality. Also Panasonic stand alone players tend to favor the -R media a little better than the +R's. Do these back up's pixelize in your PC?
Before you spend some money on new software, why don't you rip a movie that can fit on your disk without compression. Make a 1:1 copy, no compression. If you still have a problem with pixelation than it could be a hardware or dvd disk problem. I had similar problems, periodic coasters. My drive was only 1 year old. Bought a new drive. Eliminated my coaster problem.
